


Exquisite Horror

by nookienostradamus



Series: Tell-Tale Heart [4]
Category: The Following
Genre: Blood-soaked serial killer fluff, Dark Humor, Exploitation, F/M, Gore, Hella body count, Injury, Joe and Ryan bickering like an old married couple, M/M, Romance, True Love, Violence, mentions of past sexual abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 21:03:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1563980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nookienostradamus/pseuds/nookienostradamus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joe and Ryan realize they can't live without each other. Very few others are expected to live, either. </p><p>Largely AU, but contains some events from S2, E11-14.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exquisite Horror

**Author's Note:**

> “Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of reality.” - Edgar Allan Poe
> 
>  
> 
> FYI, I didn't use archive warnings for some of the things in here to preserve the element of surprise. No in-fic rape or non-con.
> 
> My everlasting thanks fly on black, leathery bat-wings to alight on the steely editorial knives wielded by [Portrait_of_a_Fool](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Portrait_of_a_Fool/pseuds/Portrait_of_a_Fool). I plunked a chunk of rock down; she played Michelangelo and carved that bitch up. You're the J to my R, baby. 
> 
> Many sleazy hugs to my buddy [Startedwith1Whisper](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Startedwith1Whisper/pseuds/Startedwith1Whisper), with whom I can squeal without shame about this pairing. GET IN THE PRUNE JUICE.

“You’re a real son of a bitch sometimes, you know that?” 

When Max Hardy was angry, it was righteous anger.

Ryan tried not to smile. “I had a lead.”

“You _have_ a responsibility,” Max said. “She’s sitting over there eating a ham sandwich after I threw out all the crap you bought.”

“And I can’t thank you enough for that,” said Ryan.

“Good,” Max said. “Then you can start apologizing.”

“Max, listen,” Ryan said, trying to put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m really sorry.”

“Not to me,” she said, shrugging away Ryan’s hand and fixing him with a viper’s glare. “To her.” 

By the kitchen table, Mandy was trying not to look, though she could obviously hear everything. Max grabbed her phone, shoved it into the back pocket of her jeans, and walked out the door without another word.

“Whoooo,” Mandy said, shaking her head. She paused to swallow a chunk of sandwich. ( _Was that_ spinach _peeking out from between the slices of bread? Ugh, Max_.) “She’s pissed at you,” Mandy finished.

“It would hardly be the first time,” Ryan said. He kicked his duffel where it lay on the ground, and went into the kitchen. 

Mandy sprung up from her seat, her meal about half-finished. Ryan actually had to stop himself from telling her to sit down and clean her plate. “How is he?” she asked. “Did he ask about me?”

“Yeah,” Ryan said. “He misses you. Calls you ‘Mouse.’”

This time, when Mandy smiled, Ryan caught the half-moon shine of tears in her wide eyes. 

“That’s Joe,” she said. Unbidden, she went up to Ryan and threw her arms around him, tucking her head underneath his chin.

He was shocked for a moment, but at least managed to put one hand over her fragile shoulder blade and push an errant strand of her coarse hair behind her ear with the other. “Hey,” he said. “It’s okay.”

“I’m cool,” she said, backing away and sniffling. “It’s just—you smell like him.”

That one threw Ryan for a loop. He knew Mandy meant it as an innocuous—if sentimental—observation, but Joe’s scent made him feel possessive, as if no one else had the right to it.

Back at the compound, Joe had managed to keep his eager initiates, and Emma, at bay for the night. Ryan seemed to remember that Joe excused himself from the throng with the pretense of a debilitating headache—a sweet twist of irony considering that the two of them had fucked three more times before Ryan departed. Murmuring trivialities, Joe had slid two fingers inside Ryan as he lay on his back, then sucked him to hardness until Ryan dug his fingers into Joe’s hair and forced him to swallow his cock. At some point in the night, Ryan had surveyed Joe’s body with a languid eye, pressing fingertips into the flesh where afterward he would sink his teeth, biting ever harder at Joe’s encouragement. When he couldn’t take it anymore Joe had hauled him up onto his lap, biting his lips almost to bleeding as he pushed Ryan down—nearly dry and gasping with pain—onto his cock. There was no sleep, only prodding and pinching, talking, hurting and soothing.

It had been the best and most indulgent night Ryan had passed in more than a decade.

Once he was out of the compound gates, it took his entire reserve of willpower not to turn around, charge the house, slam Joe hard against a wall and kiss the remaining breath out of him. He wanted to fill himself with Joe, be in him, around him. 

It would have terrified the Ryan from before, the one who had yet to have his fear and hesitation pulled out of him by Joe’s exquisite, rapturous suffering. Now it made him crave cruelty, mindlessness, havoc—anything to bring him closer. Ryan’s hands twitched; he stared too long at the slenderness and delicacy of Mandy’s neck—

No.

Ryan shook his head.

“You okay?” Mandy asked.

“Yeah,” Ryan said. “Just didn’t get much sleep.”

“Ew,” said Mandy. “I so don’t want to know.”

“You this snotty around Joe?”

She looked chastised. “Well, I just know Joe’s kinda…like that,” she said. “He had a lot of private time with my mom. With Judy. I walked in on him and Emma once.”

Ryan’s daydreaming drowsiness fled. He took Mandy by both shoulders. “When?”

“Uh, I don’t know,” she said. “A little while ago.”

“When, _exactly_?” Ryan asked, giving her a shake that snapped her head back in a short arc. 

“Just before I left.” 

Mandy’s eyes were wide. Ryan could see the fear rising in them like water in a stoppered sink. “After he called me?”

“I don’t know!” Mandy said. “Ryan, you’re hurting me.”

He let her go and she stumbled backward. Ryan clutched the sides of his head, willing the blood pounding in his temples to slow beneath the pressure of his palms.

Mandy scowled at him and turned to walk back into the kitchen.

“Mandy, hey,” he called. “Mandy, I’m sorry. I’m just really tired.”

“Whatever,” she said. 

“I mean it,” said Ryan, already annoyed with her attitude. Running a hand through his hair, he could feel the mad heat rising from his skin. “Just c’mere, huh? I’m sorry.”

“It’s cool,” she said, her tone suggesting it wasn’t cool at all. “You know,” she said, turning around to set that blazing look on Ryan again, “you and Joe are a lot alike sometimes.”

Ryan had to hold his wrist to keep himself from sweeping the small stack of dirty dishes off the counter. Instead he clenched his fists until his fingernails bit bright points of pain into his palms. “ _Why_ , Joe?”

The buzz of the phone in his pocket was a merciful interruption. “What?”

“Ryan? It’s Mike.”

“What is it?” Ryan asked.

“Max said you’d been MIA for a couple of days, and that’s your prerogative,” Mike said. “But we’ve got a situation.”

“Joe?” Ryan asked.

“Looks like it,” said Mike. “A group of goons in white masks took down the staff of a bakery in Midtown. They’re en route to Manhattan Memorial.”

“Where’s the bakery?” Ryan asked. “I’ll meet you there.”

After ending the call with Mike, Ryan sent the plates and glasses on the counter flying with a sweep of his forearm. They shattered in quick successive bursts like fireworks. From the other room, Mandy gave a frightened squeak, but Ryan was already crunching through the shards and heading for the door, too intent to care.

Maybe he’d cap one of the little cult fuckers just for spite.

***

As it turned out, he lucked into something better.

The bakery attack was an inroad to Manhattan General, specifically the secure ward where one of Lily Gray’s psycho twins—Rick? Jake? Jack? whatever—was being held. Local PD had snagged the stupid bastard after the showdown at the motel. Ryan sincerely hoped he’d been the one with the machine gun. 

Whether or not this twin was the one that took down the kid that night, the cops worked him over good before remanding him to the Bureau. That made Ryan smile. Lily Gray was a fly in the ointment. An effective one, but a goddamn distraction nonetheless. She occupied Joe’s mind, and no matter how angry Ryan was, the foremost place in Joe’s head was something that he jealously guarded for himself. 

But it was the anger that won out in the end, when Ryan was crouched in the dank hospital sub-basement with a thug’s gun to his head and Rick-Jake-Jack looking on with the kind of undiluted smugness that only the young can conjure. The young or the completely insane.

It was easy enough to break the guy’s arm. Just a grip on the wrist and quick punch upward with the heel of the hand and the round knob of the radius bone popped loose and tore up through the skin. He was on the ground screaming in half a second, his gun clattering to the cement. Lily’s stock of imported mercenaries always came up short against Ryan. It was worth it for the momentary panic on the kid’s face.

Then the smugness was back, and he was grinning with those jacked-up horse teeth. “Ryan Hardy,” he said.

“That’s right,” said Ryan. “I seem to have forgotten your name.”

“Hey, that’s okay,” the kid said. “You can’t be expected to remember everything at your age. I’m Luke.”

“Luke. Right.” His jocular tone was irritating, and even in the hospital gown he looked like a member of Hell's own polo club. “Well, today’s your lucky day, Luke. You wanna know why?”

The smile dropped away with shocking speed. “Not really.”

“Oh, sure you do,” said Ryan, leveling the gun with a casual tilt at Luke’s face. “Because I’m not going to kill you.”

Luke laughed. “I knew that. You’re one of the good guys. You can’t even if you wanted to.”

Ryan laughed, too, and for a moment they were both laughing. Then Ryan aimed a kick at Luke, his boot connecting hard enough with the pubic bone that he heard something crack. The kid went to his knees, spit frothing between his teeth with the force of his silent scream. 

Grabbing a fistful of Luke’s hair, Ryan hauled his head back so hard his hands flew off his injured groin and flailed behind him for purchase. 

Ryan pressed the muzzle of the thug’s gun hard into Luke’s cheek. “Listen, you little shit. I gutted your friend Gisele. I took my time. And I _liked_ it. I can guarantee you she didn’t.”

Anger registered through the pain in Luke’s eyes.

“I would do the same to you, and your brother, and your mother. In a heartbeat,” Ryan said, hissing in Luke’s ear. “And the only reason I’m not fucking your face with this gun until you choke on your teeth is that you’re useful to me. Letting you limp out of here alive serves my purpose.”

For just a second, Ryan felt a little guilty for this bit of petty vengeance against Joe, but it wasn’t like the kid presented any real threat. To either of them. 

He let go of Luke’s hair. Luke was crying. It was involuntary, probably from the pain, but it was still satisfying.

“I’m going to kill you,” Luke spat. “One day, Ryan Hardy. I’m going to watch you die.”

“Yeah, well, not today,” Ryan said, motioning with the gun. “Go run to Mommy. She already wants me dead, so you can give her another reason.”

Luke stood on shaky legs, still staring venom at Ryan. The thug on the floor groaned. Still looking at Luke, Ryan swung the gun around and blew the guy’s face off.

“Go,” he said.

This time Luke turned and started hobbling away as fast as he could.

***

He could tell Mike was trying not to, but Ryan kept catching those surreptitious looks out of the corner of his eye. The usual concern on Mike’s face was tempered with wariness, like the look you’d give a big dog behind a low fence.

They were sitting in the car, the funhouse of red and blue lights that was swirling around them distorted through the glass. Somber coroner’s technicians were bringing out gurney after gurney bearing white-draped shapes. Luke Gray was confirmed as missing from the scene.

Ryan, in his infinite mercy, decided to spare Mike his agitation. “I just want to sit here and not talk for a while,” he said. “Okay?”

It would buy him a couple seconds of silence. 

Mike, god-double-damn him, just couldn’t leave well enough alone though. “It’s not your fault that Luke got away,” he said. “Nobody expected this.”

Ryan almost laughed. It wasn’t his fault; it was his choice. Since letting Luke Gray go, he had been trying very, very hard not to think about Joe’s hands on Emma’s pale skin—her small, slim arms, her breasts.

“It’s not that,” he said.

_Don’t think of a blue elephant, right?_

The images kept swimming up through the barriers that Ryan tried to put in place in his mind. He slapped the steering wheel with the palm of his hand.

“Look,” Mike said. “I’m not going to ask if you don’t want me to. I’m just saying that you can talk about it.”

Ryan sniffed, pressing his head back against the headrest. He wasn’t about to open up and spill like some diary-toting teenager, but the fact that this was Mike—the one he’d fucked behind Joe’s back—made him want to say _something_ to ease the sting. It was bitter, stupid, selfish. Pretty much irresistible. 

“You ever been so angry, Mikey—I mean really fucking mad at someone,” Ryan said, “because they got involved in something? Like you asked them not to, maybe you even begged them, and they did it anyway?”

“That’s a stupid question,” Mike said. 

The response jostled Ryan out of his sulk for a second. “Huh?”

“Yes,” Mike said. “The answer is ‘yes.’ You, Ryan. All the time.”

Ryan stared for a moment, then laughed. “Yeah, okay,” he said. “Fair enough.”

Mike finally relaxed enough to allow a smile. 

“I’m talking about someone you really cared about,” Ryan said. “Someone in your dumbest, most naïve moments you thought about maybe spending your life with?”

Only silence followed. When Ryan looked over, Mike was looking out the window, his frown reflected in the light-spattered glass. 

“All I can say is that it’s going to hit you out of nowhere sometimes,” Mike said. “I feel awful about it every time, but sometimes I just get so mad at my dad. For leaving. Even though it wasn’t his fault. I, uh…I guess I want to shift the blame off me for just a little bit, because it’s so damn heavy.” He looked over, the muscles in his face tense with the effort to fight back tears. “So I understand you still feel that way sometimes about her.”

 _Her?_ Ryan shook his head. _Mike thought he was talking about Claire._

“This is going to be over soon,” said Mike. “You’re going to take Joe Carroll down for good. And you can get on with your life. Be happy for once. The way I see it, the universe owes you.”

“The universe doesn’t deliver, Mike,” Ryan said. “Sad but true.”

“Don’t start in with that ‘death curse’ stuff again,” Mike said. “It’s not true. I _know_ it’s not true.”

“No, you don’t.”

Mike put a hand on Ryan’s shoulder. “I do. Really. Listen, I didn’t want to tell you before it was time.”

“Tell me what?” Ryan said, scanning Mike’s face.

“It’s Claire,” Mike said. “She’s alive.”

Ryan barked out a laugh. “Don’t bullshit me, Mike.”

“Look at me, Ryan,” Mike said. “I’m not lying.”

Ryan shrugged off Mike’s hand. “Don’t—” he started, then looked over at Mike, whose expression told him he was ready to run at any moment. He held a finger up at Mike’s face. “Don’t you bullshit me, Mikey.”

“I wanted to tell you,” said Mike. “She survived. But we couldn’t say anything. She had to go into the program. Her and Joey. And you can’t tell me that Joe wouldn’t try to track them down, because he would.”

“How long did you know?”

Mike pursed his lips and wrung his hands in his lap, struggling. 

Ryan reached over and grabbed his shirtfront. “How long did you know, Mike?”

“A year.”

Ryan’s breath left his lungs in a rush. He let Mike go and sat back, his spine curving into the leather seat. “A year,” he repeated, staring out through the windshield.

“You have to understand,” Mike said. “I wasn’t allowed to—”

The words were cut abruptly off as Ryan’s fist plowed into his face, knocking him sideways hard enough that his head struck the window. The skin of Mike’s cheek split and blossomed red.

“Ryan—” Mike turned his head to look at Ryan, his eyes wide with shock.

He’d raised his hand about halfway up to his face to touch the injured cheek when Ryan twisted at the waist and sent a left hook into his solar plexus. Mike gave a choked gasp and doubled over, drooling blood between his knees.

“Fuck,” he rasped, scrabbling blindly for the door handle. 

Ryan hit the “lock” button, lunged across the seat and hauled Mike up by the throat, slamming his head into the window again.

“You wanted to tell me?” Ryan said, spittle foaming at the corners of his mouth. “Huh? You wanted to tell me, you little fuck?”

When Mike held his hands up, trying to protect his face, Ryan delivered two kidney punches in quick succession.

Mike cried out, squeezing his watering eyes shut on instinct. “Stop,” he said. It was no louder than a sigh. 

“Exactly when,” Ryan said, his jaw clenched tight, “are you going to get it through your thick skull?” He drove Mike’s head against the window again. “What _you want_ doesn’t matter.”

Ryan loosened his choke hold and grabbed Mike’s shirt with the other fist, pulling him in and landing a left-handed punch square on his face. His bottom lip burst open.

“Ryan, please—” The words were ragged emerging from his ruptured mouth.

“Please?” 

Mike coughed blood all over the dash when Ryan’s fist met his stomach.

“I’m begging you,” Mike wheezed. “Ryan, I’m _begging you_. Please. Stop.” Hunched over as he was from the last blow, Mike’s shoulders began to shake.

It took Ryan, who had pulled his arm back for another punch, a moment to realize that the kid was sobbing. He let his hand drop. “Fuck.”

Prying the lock up, Ryan opened the door and spilled out of the car, not even waiting to regain equilibrium before he was off and running. Several blocks down, the pain in his hand caught up with him. It traveled like lightning up his arm, blowing up the nerves all the way into his shoulder. 

Panting, he leaned back against the brick in a narrow alley, clutching his hand, which had already begun to turn the mottled purple of expired beef. At least two knuckles were fractured. 

While prodding the nubs of bone on his hand that slid around far more easily than they should have, Ryan registered a deeper ache, beyond the burn of his calves and hamstrings from the running, or the complaint of his galloping heart—wretched, broken thing that it was. A sort of swelling in his gut pushing at the borders of urgency.

Then the mind-blanking rush of instinct eased, and Ryan realized he was painfully hard. He fumbled at his fly with his clumsy but less-damaged left hand, fury rising white in his vision until he was able to yank down his jeans and briefs. The teeth of the zipper left livid tracks down the length of his cock. Somewhere the added agony might have registered, but he could think of nothing else but getting his good hand around his erection. The throttling grip and fast, brutal strokes served to clear his head a little. Above the mildew-and-piss smell of the alley rose the scent of blood, filling Ryan’s senses.

Unconsciously, he’d raised his mangled hand to his mouth. He licked away the taste from his lips but it wasn’t enough.

There was no space in the coal furnace of his mind for recognition to creep in—for Ryan to realize he was jerking off furiously two or three feet into an alleyway, sucking the blood from each ruined knuckle in turn. Mike’s blood. Probably some of his own, too.

Every stab of his tongue against a sore spot in his hand brought him closer to orgasm, and he shouted when he finally did come. The sound knocked back and forth between the two brick walls until it died out. 

Ryan doubled over, breathing ripples onto the puddle between his feet. Release had wiped away enough of the pain that he could probably get home if he started soon. If anyone had heard or seen, Ryan was too blissed-out to care. What was a little more filth in the alley, or a sourceless scream?

This was New York. There were crazies everywhere. 

***

Mandy was gone when he got back to the condo, but the shards of dinnerware were still strewn across half the galley kitchen and some of the rug beyond. Ryan stepped right in the middle, the soles of his boots picking up slivers of glass that caught in the carpet on his way to the bathroom. 

A wrist brace that smelled vaguely of sweat was the best he could do for something to wrap up the hand. Ryan dabbed rubbing alcohol on the abraded skin, wincing at the smell more than the pain. A little vodka would be much nicer, but Max would have uncovered any secret stash of alcohol in the condo, no matter how well hidden. 

_Damn those Hardy family detective instincts_ , Ryan thought, and bared his teeth toward the mirror in something that might have been a smile. 

He walked out to the kitchen again, grinding ceramic into powder against the hard tile. His fridge may be the Bachelor’s Special (a half-empty jar of pickles, some ketchup packets, takeout that was probably sentient and talking by now), but Ryan knew that he had at least a dish towel and some ice. He was using a dinner knife to hack a coagulated chunk free of the ice maker’s tray when he heard a knock on the door.

The ice came loose, and Ryan grabbed it with bare fingers and set it atop the filthy wrist brace, trying to balance it on his shaking hand.

“Just a sec,” he called.

The door opened. “Ryan?”

“Goddammit,” he said under his breath. “Who’s asking?”

A detective with close-cropped graying curls but hardly a line in his coffee-colored skin stepped into the condo. He wore a long trench coat that was a little too “Dragnet” for Ryan’s taste.

“Turner,” Ryan said. "Still playing cops and robbers?"

"Desk jockeying, more like it," he said. "How's it hanging, Hardy?”

“Little to the left.”

“You're an asshole, my friend.” Turner scratched his scalp, just behind his ear. It was a play for time. "Hey, listen," he said. "I need to get serious for a minute." 

"There's a first time for everything," Ryan said. 

"I have someone who wants to see you." 

Ryan almost laughed. That would be Claire, then. She was the undisputed master of terrible timing. He wanted to shut the door right in her gobsmacked face, but it was too much of a risk to take on the off chance that she had contacted Joe. Or tried to.

“Oh yeah?” he said, playing casual.

"You may not like it, Hardy," Turner said, "but she kept asking to see you."

Turner pushed the door open. Its handle scraped gently into the dented plaster from when Max had almost blown the hinges off last week. Standing between two interchangeably suited stuffed shirts was Claire.

The year of hiding, however and wherever she’d done it, had not been particularly kind. She sported bruise-dark circles under her eyes. Her hair was lusterless and tangled and her skin had a sallow, feverish sheen to it. Maybe it was the cumulative sleepless nights since Joe’s big reveal. Or maybe it was the effect of Ryan’s dissipated attraction to her. Claire Matthews had once been an object of mystery, a prize to be won—the embattled but surviving wife of a monster. 

It looked like Claire gotten hung up on simply surviving, ensuring her own irrelevance to either of the men she’d once loved. Ryan had blown past her into unfolding realization, flaying away the layers of bullshit to uncover a dark singularity. She was dust behind him, still determined to get in his eyes.

Ryan took a deep breath. “Claire.”

“Hi, Ryan,” she said.

“I can’t believe it,” said Ryan.

Claire walked into the room, still not reaching for him, still not trying to touch him, but moving closer. “I wish I could have told you,” she said. “I fought it, Ryan. Believe me. They said you had to believe I was dead.”

“I don’t understand,” he said, hoping those were the right words. Her explanation would be tedious, but necessary. 

Some actors say that they draw on true experiences to bolster fake ones. It was easy this time with the wound so fresh. Ryan only had to imagine Joe as a collage—hands, lips, everything that had touched Emma Hill—and the requisite tears came.

“Oh, Ryan,” Claire said, and rushed forward into his arms. 

Absent Joe’s scent, she smelled all wrong. Ryan played strands of her dyed-dark hair through his fingers, holding his busted right hand just above her shoulder as she sobbed into his shirt. He hoped it smelled like payback for Mike’s betrayal, however abstract that was. It felt as if someone else was touching her with his hand.

“They said it was the only way for Joey to be safe,” she said, sniffling. “If there was even the slightest chance that Joe was alive, and you came looking for me…” Claire raised her head. A fan-shape of black lines sprawled just below the lower lash line where wet mascara had imprinted on her skin. 

It put Ryan in mind of the kid from A Clockwork Orange. A little bit of the old ultra-violence. He had to disguise his laugh as a choked-back sob. 

Claire reached up, took his face between her dry hands. 

“It’s okay,” Ryan said. “I understand.” He grabbed both her wrists and guided her hands gently away. Her touch was all wrong, too. “Can we have a minute?” he said to the agents.

Turner nodded and stepped into the hallway, closing the door behind him.

“Where were you?” Ryan said.

“I can’t tell you that,” she said. “Not yet. Please understand. I can’t say anything until Joe’s dead.”

“He’s still at large, Claire,” said Ryan. “Nobody knows where he is.”

“But you’re looking,” she said, weary eyes full of hope.

“Yes. Always.”

“Ryan,” said Claire, “did it ever really stop for you? Did you have at least a few good months not thinking about Joe?”

“No,” he said. “I didn’t.” It might be the one truth he told that evening.

“God, I wish I could have been here,” Claire said. “Or that you could have come with us.”

“Claire, it’s fine,” said Ryan. “You had to do what was best for Joey.”

“Mike knew,” said Claire. “And I’m sorry for that.”

“I think Mike’s sorry, too,” Ryan said. 

Claire nodded. “Can I sit down? All of this is—” She hadn’t noticed the hand. 

That would have been the first thing Joe saw, but the thought of Joe’s lips on his pulped knuckles only made Ryan feel like his lungs were being squeezed from the inside. Biting back annoyance, he said to Claire, “Sure. Can I get you a drink? Coffee?”

“Coffee would be great.” She gave him her broken little smile.

Ryan headed into the kitchen, kicking away smashed crockery. Instead of sitting on the couch, Claire followed him.

“Oh, my God, Ryan,” she said. “What is this?”

He held up the injured hand. “Clumsy.”

“Are you just going to let it sit there?” Claire asked.

“Was thinking about it.”

She knelt and began to collect some of the pieces.

“Claire, please,” Ryan said. “I’ll get it later. You’re going to cut your hands up.” 

“Do you have a vacuum?”

“Just leave it,” Ryan snapped. “Go sit down.”

Claire stood up. 

If Ryan looked at her he was sure he’d see that expression of hers that mixed curiosity and disapproval. But he didn’t look. He filled the grubby coffee pot instead. “I see you haven’t learned to stop trying to pick up after me. Someday you’ll realize there are too many pieces.”

“You’re angry with me,” Claire said.

“I’m angry at circumstance.” The coffee pot in Ryan’s hand impacted the side of the sink. He was sure Claire also heard the brittle sound as a branching crack traveled up the curve of its glass body to the metal band at the neck. “Shit,” he said.

Suddenly, Claire was behind him, gentle fingers prying the pot out of his hands. “I’m sorry,” she said. “That was selfish of me. I guess part of me assumed that I could just walk back into your life like I’d never left. It’s a stupid dream. You could have met someone—”

“I have,” said Ryan.

If Claire made any effort to conceal her crushed look, it was unsuccessful. “Ryan, I—” she started. “That’s…that’s great. Really great.”

“It could be,” Ryan said.

“Well,” she said, obviously fighting back tears, “I didn’t come to mess up your life, your plans. I only want one thing. Then I’ll…I’ll leave you alone so you can be happy.” She set the pot down in the sink.

Ryan shook his head. “Except we both want the same thing. Joe.”

“Yeah,” said Claire, placing the ruined pot in the sink. “But that’s why I came back, Ryan. I don’t just want Joe caught. I want him dead.”

Ryan’s sharp laugh rattled in the aluminum of the sink and made Claire flinch back slightly. “What? Are you going to do it yourself? Even if you knew where Joe is, I can guarantee you he’s got ten psychos primed and ready to cut you down the minute you get near him.”

“I think he’ll want to talk to me,” Claire said.

“Jesus, Claire,” Ryan said, pushing past her and crunching through the debris again to leave the kitchen. “Did the program erase your memory, too? Joe tried to kill you. I thought he _had_ killed you. So does he.”

“Then I’ll go on TV,” she said, following Ryan.

“That’s a bad idea. Incredibly bad.” Ryan struggled not to give in to nascent panic. Claire was a game changer, a wild card. This was a fucking daytime soap opera set-up; it didn’t happen to real people. At some point both he and Joe had both loved her, or at least thought they did. But after what Mandy had said about Emma, Ryan felt like a door had closed in his head; his line in to Joe was trapped in the jamb and fluttering.

“Think about it, Ryan,” she said, taking hold of his forearm. “If he sees me—sees me alive—it’ll rattle him. Somewhere along the line he’ll make a mistake.”

There had to be some sort of shitty poem out there about ex-lovers coming back on the scene. Joe would know. 

_Joe would know._

Ryan shook his arm out of her grip. “No,” he said. “It’s suicide.” _Because I will kill you. I’ll break your neck before you get close to him again_. Rage overrode the agony as he clenched his damaged hand. 

“I know you want to get Joe as much as I do,” said Claire. “Let me try. Let me help. I know him.”

“No, you don’t. I knew he was alive,” Ryan said. “I knew it here—” he pointed to his temple, “and I knew it here.” He put a hand over his sternum. “I know him because I didn’t stop. I didn’t pretend that he was gone, try to push him out of my mind or fill my head with crappy motivational sayings from self-help books about moving on from tragedy.”

“That’s not fair—” Claire started.

“Neither is you coming back,” Ryan said, his jaw tight.

Claire put her hands up, conciliatory. “Okay, okay. I realize this is a lot to take in,” she said. “And I can’t apologize enough for that. I really can’t. But try to listen to what I’m saying. You get…wrapped up in Joe, get into his mind. It’s a dangerous place. You stop thinking clearly.”

He was taller than Claire as it was, but Ryan leaned down and got right in her face. “This _is_ me thinking clearly. You’re the one coming in here with these batshit ideas about taking Joe down when you’ve been off playing suburban mommy for the last year. _I’ve_ been here. Leave him to me. Joe is mine.”

Claire had never been very good at concealing her emotions, and it gave Ryan a little satisfaction to see the naked horror on her face. “You’ve changed, Ryan. You say the same things, but it’s the way you say them. It scares me.”

“You should be afraid,” he said. “I’m a scary person. My mind is more like Joe’s than you’ve ever wanted to admit.”

Stepping back, the tears pooling just above her lower lashes again, Claire shook her head. “Whoever she is, I pity the woman you’re seeing. I really do.”

“Man,” Ryan said.

“What?”

“You pity the man I’m seeing.” He wouldn’t have said it if it wasn’t worth seeing her jaw drop. “And don’t. He’s got his own obsessions.” Ryan took Claire’s arm as gently as he could manage and steered her toward the door. 

“I don’t know you anymore,” she said, letting herself be led as if in a trance.

Opening the door, Ryan told her, “Maybe you never did.”

The agents turned, and Ryan released a confused Claire into their midst. “Ryan—”

“You may want to take her phone, if she has one,” Ryan said to Turner. “She’s got some wacko plan to contact the media.”

“Hey!” Claire said, anger suffusing her face as one of the agents took her by the arm.

“Goodbye, Claire,” Ryan said, and shut the door.

He walked back into the kitchen, breathing deep and trying to release his fist one battered and aching bone at a time. When he picked up the cracked coffee pot, it gave up the ghost, the glass falling in almost symmetrical halves and shattering in the sink.

“Fuck!” Ryan tossed the empty and useless handle across the kitchen. It rattled against the opposite wall. His whole fucking arm felt like it was on fire.

Nevertheless, he decided the microwave was next to go. 

~~~

 _Joe Carroll is watching Kingston Tanner—that loathsome fraud—strut about the stage on his show,_ Fountain of Faith _. The evangelist moves like a goose, head popping forward and back again as he paces in front of what looks more like the set for a beauty contest than an altar. Joe hates everything about the man, but loves hearing his own name on Tanner’s lips._

_To be fair, Joe likes hearing his name spoken by anyone. Some more than others._

_Tanner slaps the wood of the pulpit to punctuate his condemnation._

_Joe winces and looks down. “Teeth,” he says, a warning._

_Emma is kneeling on the floor between his spread legs, giving—if Joe is perfectly honest—a second-rate blow job. Her brow furrows, a suggestion of that irritating backtalk she’s grown so fond of lately. Joe digs his fingertips a little harder into her scalp. She can’t protest with her mouth full of cock._

_“We all know our Ten Commandments, don’t we?” Tanner asks his audience. “That’s one of the first things we learn as good, righteous, God-fearing Christians. But what many people—many Christians—fail to remember is the order of those commandments. Yes, my children, the order is very important.”_

_There’s been a little too much irrelevant Biblical drivel from Tanner today. Joe is concentrating on not going soft._

_“If you ask a fellow believer what the first commandment is, they almost all give the same answer,” says Tanner. “Go on. Ask your neighbor. What is the first commandment? I’ll bet most of you said it was ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Well, yes—” That smug little laugh. “That’s certainly important. But the first commandment—the first—is ‘Thou shalt have no other gods.’ Thou shalt have. No. Other. Gods. Before. Me. For I am the Lord thy God. This is what it says. I know some people will be consulting their Bibles tonight, my children.”_

_“A little enthusiasm wouldn’t kill you, dear,” Joe says to Emma._

_She moves a little faster, but her grip on the base of his cock is loose, apathetic._

_“We all know that he has forgotten ‘Thou shalt not kill,’” Tanner says. “Forgotten? No! Disregarded! But do you know that Joe Carroll has also forgotten the first and most important of God’s commandments?”_

_“It is not enough that Joe Carroll, this monster, declares that there is no God,” Tanner says to a chorus of gasps from his rapt audience._

_Joe laughs. Emma gags a little._

_“No, no,” says Tanner, “he does something much, much worse. He violates that first and most important commandment. Joe Carroll declares himself a god!”_

_The muscles in Joe’s thighs clench, an involuntary response as he feels the pleasant build toward orgasm._

_“But I will tell you, ladies and gentlemen,” Tanner says, now growing red in the face. He pulls a handkerchief out of the breast pocket of his appalling suit and dabs at his forehead. “Joe Carroll dares to call his crusade of terror ‘holy.’ He dares to call his cult of the evil, the forsaken, the insane, a ‘religion.’”_

_“That’s right,” Joe says. “Just like that.”_

_“We know, my fellow Christians, we know, that what Joe Carroll truly does is mock religion,” says Tanner. “He mocks our faith. He mocks our ideals. He mocks our morals.”_

_“Mm. Come on,” Joe says, his voice gone low and growling._

_“Ladies and gentlemen,” Tanner says, preparing for the big finish, “Joe Carroll mocks our Creator. The Lord of Hosts.” He looks directly into the camera’s lens. “Joe Carroll mocks God himself.”_

_“Yes,” says Joe. He closes his eyes. “Going to come.”_

_“Know this now, Joe Carroll,” Tanner thunders. “God. Will. Not. Be. Mocked.”_

_“Yes,” Joe says again. “Fuck! Yes!” And he’s coming, unending spasms to the sound of riotous cheering from the TV._

__Ryan _, he thinks, hoping he hasn’t said it aloud._

_Emma stands up, right in front of the damn television, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. He obviously hadn’t spoken Ryan’s name, because she’s got that coy, scheming expression on her face. Joe moves to look past her shoulder. He’s had enough of her company for now._

_She reaches out toward him, caresses his cheek. “Joe,” she says. “Come to bed.”_

_Joe turns his head away from her touch._

_“I miss you,” Emma says. “Tanner says the same things over and over. You won’t learn anything new from watching this all day.”_

_“That’s not the point,” he says._

_Emma leans in. “Kiss me,” she says._

_Joe remembers the way Ryan had sucked him, the taste of his mouth. With a hand on her throat, he pushes Emma away._

_There again—the wounded dog look._

_“Fine.”_

_“I’ll talk to you later,” he says, looking not at her but back at the preacher on the screen. “I’ve got to do some thinking.”_

_Emma shakes her head, lips compressed into a tight, white line, then she leaves, slamming the door behind her._

_Joe breathes out and thinks,_ Ryan.

~~~

If he stopped to think for even one red-tinged second while gutting the condo with his brutalized hands, Ryan might have lost his momentum. The point was not having to think, though. Destroying and destroying, giving in and giving over. Not to Joe this time, but to himself. 

A distrust of contradiction had haunted Ryan for most of his adult life. Hell, since he’d stood by and watched the life drain out of the junkie fuck who killed his father. 

_Since he’d watched the life drain out of his father._

Some people—his instructors at the academy, the witnesses he interviewed—said it was unreal, watching somebody die. That slip of anything recognizably human from face, body, hands, skin. Like a cinematic trick: a man turned into a couch or an end table. Father to furniture in two and a half bloody, wheezing minutes.

But it had always been the opposite for Ryan. The dying seemed to come into themselves at that moment, become _more_ real. Whatever box the act of dying opened inside them, it opened something in Ryan as well. And as they fell into it—whether slowly or with a couple shuddering breaths—Ryan watched. 

From speaking with Joe while he was in prison, he had almost taught himself to expect to see something looking back—along the lines of that goddamn Nietzsche quote everyone bastardized. 

But there was nothing, and that was so much better. Not in the box where the dead fell forever, and not in the one inside Ryan. Joe told him death had meaning, poetry. But that was pretense—ever Joe’s specialty. Ryan didn’t have to give it meaning. He just had to watch and wonder. When he was opened up like that, only then, could he settle into contradiction. Could be the same man who cared about Mike Weston’s fate at the same time he was breaking his face. The same man who wanted to protect Max and wanted to use Max, all at the same time. 

The only person on the planet who wasn’t subject to these contradictions was Joe. Everyone else—Max, Mike, Claire, anyone—tumbled into the box within him or else clung to its edge. But Joe fit perfectly inside. It was shaped for him, his hard edges and his sinuous charm, all at once. Joe let his own inner reservoir lie open and poured blood into it, and it was, for lack of a better word, the _purest_ thing Ryan had seen. 

Because Joe didn’t deny. He embraced his contradiction. He could love Mandy and sacrifice her. 

_He could be devoted to Ryan and still fuck Emma._

That thought prompted Ryan to stomp into pieces the last and lowest level of the living room shelving unit. The rest of them he’d taken care of with a useless (and frankly godawful) decorative pillar that now lay in powdery chunks by the couch.

It had been coming for a while. Not the physical trashing of his place, but the preparation. The only way to clinch his jealous hold on Joe’s attentions was to be with him. Constantly.

_People like us can be consistent. Constant, even._

Joe had opened him like a burned book, translated the nonsense, and filled in the charred blanks. And he’d showed Ryan how to keep the box unsealed. Ryan felt most alive when those floodgates were swung wide to bleed cool nothingness out into the air. He thought he had needed to unbolt it in order to kill, to do what he had to. But the challenge all along hadn’t been prying it open but keeping it shut.

Ryan needed to kill to keep it open.

Judging from the way she staggered back, pushing Mandy behind her, that was the exact realization that Max saw on Ryan’s face when he spun around, panting and red-faced with lacerated knuckles bleeding freely again. He hadn’t heard the door opening over the firecracker pops of splintering wood.

“Jesus, Ryan!” Max shouted. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

For a few long seconds, Ryan couldn’t find words in his brain—not just an explanation but any words at all. Mandy stood behind Max’s shoulder, eyes wide and hands trembling as they clutched her upper arm.

Ryan breathed out, long and slow, though it did nothing to calm him. “Claire,” he said.

“What about Claire?” Max asked. “She’s dead, Ryan. She’s been dead for a year.”

“She was here,” he said. “Just now.” It was only the pain in his hand that stopped Ryan from hitting Max when he saw the look that crossed her face. One of those that said, _You’ve gone right off the deep end_.

“Ryan—” she started with a cautious tone, pushing Mandy back toward the door.

“Ask Mike,” Ryan said, raising his bloody hand and smirking at it. “He knows all about it.”

“I’m asking _you_ ,” said Max. “Ryan, what the fuck?”

“What the fuck, indeed,” Ryan said. “On the list of things I needed today, Claire Matthews was dead-fucking-last. I did _not_ need her throwing a wrench in the gears. The gears were already wrenched enough." 

“If you’re talking about Joe—” Max started.

Ryan dropped his jaw in a parody of amazement. “If I’m talking about Joe. ‘If.’ Have you really been that fucking checked out for the past year? I’m _always_ talking about Joe.”

“Ryan, listen to me,” said Max. “Whatever it is he’s done to you this time, it’s got your head messed up.”

“Stop right there, Max,” Ryan said. “See, I’m going to let you in on a little secret. You don’t know a goddamn thing about what Joe does to me. So stay out of it.”

Max’s lip curled up in a disapproving snarl. “First you ask for my help, now you’re telling me to stay out of it. Well, I’m sorry. I won’t.”

“Then you’re going to die,” Ryan said. “You follow me, you die. That’s all there is to it.”

Max shook her head. “If Claire is still alive, that’s just a lie you tell yourself so you don’t let people get close to you.”

“Oh, she’s alive,” Ryan said. “She couldn’t leave well enough alone, and now she’s going to die, too. For real.”

Once upon a time the concern in Max’s eyes would have calmed Ryan. Now all it did was feed his rage. 

“Where did this come from, Ryan?” Max asked. “You’ve been a cynic for as long as I’ve known you, but you’ve never been this…fatalistic. Sure, you talk about Joe Carroll. But you’ve never wanted to do anything but stop him. To arrest him, kill him if that’s what it took. Now it sounds like you think it’s hopeless. Almost like you want Joe to get away.” 

“Joe will never get away from me,” Ryan said, grinding the words out from between his clenched teeth.

“Then what is this about?” Max asked. “I want to understand. You don’t have to be this lone wolf, Ryan. You have all the resources you need, but you keep pushing us away. All we want to do is help.”

Ryan bent down, picked up a hunk of the destroyed plaster pillar, and hurled it against the wall just over Max’s and Mandy’s heads. Mandy ducked, shrieking.

He laughed, a forced and manic little sound. “Really, I’m going to rip the face off the next person who says they ‘just want to help.’ You two keep that in mind, okay?” The hand Ryan brushed through his hair left a wide white streak of plaster dust in its wake.

“You are scaring the hell out of this little girl,” Max said. 

“Yeah? I think people need scaring,” said Ryan. “They need a little fucking reminder that things aren’t always what they seem. You should ask your little boyfriend. If he can still talk at this point.”

“Mike Weston is not my boyfriend,” Max said, her initial shock starting to give way to anger. “And what the hell do you mean, ‘if he can talk?'”

Ryan heard her question, but ignored it. “I know you two had a thing,” he said. “I _saw_ it.”

“That’s over,” said Max, her voice low and deadly.

“What’s the matter?” Ryan asked. “Not good enough in the sack? His dick not big enough? Only the best meat for Ryan Hardy’s niece.”

Max looked at Mandy, then back at Ryan, aghast. “I’m not talking about Mike—in any capacity—in front of her.”

“Her mama was a hooker,” Ryan said. “She knows the drill.”

“Don’t,” Mandy said in a small voice. “Please.”

“Christ, Ryan!” Max said. “Are you listening to yourself?”

“Actually, yes,” Ryan said. “For once in my entire goddamn life, I am listening to myself. He punctuated the last syllable with a kick to the wall that caved in a ragged maw through the plaster, making Max jump and Mandy squeal.

“I’m calling in a 9-27,” Max said, going for the phone in her pocket. “You’re not all there.”

Ryan rushed over and grabbed the phone from her hand. Mandy had almost backed entirely out of the open door.

“I am more here than I’ve ever been. This is me. Look!”

Mandy covered her eyes, which were starting to leak tears over her cheekbones.

“No,” Ryan said. He lobbed Max’s phone across the room. It hit the breakfast bar and broke apart. The pieces went skittering over the counter and onto the debris-littered floor of the kitchen. “You don’t get to look away, goddammit! Whatever you thought about me, you were wrong. _This_ is Ryan Hardy. You either come to terms with that, or you get the fuck out.”

“Fine,” Max said. “We’re going.” She turned to Mandy. “Go ahead. I’ll meet you downstairs.”

Mandy nodded and scurried away.

Max whirled around, her finger mere inches from Ryan’s nose. “You know who’s ruining your life? I’ll give you a hint. It’s not Joe Carroll. It’s _you_. You are ruining your life, and when you’re all alone with nothing but your obsessive thoughts, you can think about that for a while,” she said. “Don’t call me until you get your shit together. If you get it together. In the meantime, you can go fuck yourself, Ryan Hardy.” 

She turned to leave, but turned back, staring hard enough to burn holes in Ryan’s face. “And you’re not just ruining your own life. It’s everybody around you. Want to know why it didn’t work out with Mike? Not that I should have been stupid enough to start anything in the first place.” Max took a deep breath. 

For the first time that Ryan could remember since she was a kid, there were tears in her eyes. 

“He was in bed with me,” Max said, “but he called _your_ name.”

Ryan’s jaw dropped—this time in real shock. Then he started laughing. Big, wracking belly laughs that were almost as violent as the paroxysms with which he’d trashed his house. 

Max shook her head and turned to leave, but at the last second turned back and slapped his face. _Hard._

The laughter caught in his throat. Ryan shook his head, trying to drive the mist from the edges of his vision. "Shit, Max," he said, "I'm sorry."

"You're not even close to sorry," she said. "But you will be."

"Oh, come on," he said, rubbing his stinging cheek. "It was a dick move. Mikey's got some problems. But even you have to admit it was a _little_ funny."

"Yeah," Max said. "Hilarious." She slammed the heels of both hands into Ryan's chest, sending him stumbling backward.

He tripped over a piece of broken shelving and hit the carpet flat on his back. 

"You drive away everybody who cares about you," Max said. "You deserve everything you get."

Ryan raised a hand toward her but couldn't quite find the breath to speak.

Max gave him one last pitying look and slammed the door.

Ryan turned over on his side, gasping and coughing, but it was only a few seconds until the coughs turned to laughter again.

***

He hadn’t wanted to leave the house afterward. It was almost comforting being amid the destruction. Like the panicked little birds who can only settle in to roost after shredding recognizable things and making them into something new. 

But the comparison hadn’t sat all that well with him, and Ryan had needed a drink more than he needed safety. Safety was an illusion, anyway. The cool glass bottle was real.

In the morning, the phone was ringing in his ear, though he couldn’t remember how and when it had ended up beside his head. Or, for that matter, how his head had ended up half-pillowed on the remains of his granite breakfast bar, swaddled in a furze of couch-cushion stuffing. 

Ryan was nothing if not a creative drunk. If he remembered any of the shit he did, he could have been an artist. 

_You are an artist_ , said Joe’s voice in his head. _You are_.

Then the voice grew shrill, insistent, almost a scream. No, that was the phone. Whoever it was had hung up and redialed. He picked it up without bothering to look at the screen.

“Don’t have my shit together, Max,” Ryan said into the phone. His lips were fuzzy with cracked, dead skin and there were a million tiny hands in his brain pushing outward against his skull. 

“Ryan Hardy?”

“What’s left of him.”

“Please confirm that you are Ryan Hardy.” The voice on the other side somehow managed to be both officious and tentative.

 _So few people could take a joke._ “Yes, this is Ryan. Who the hell is this?”

“My name is Philip Gore. I’m the warden at Rikers Island. There’s been an…incident.”

 _Rikers. That would be where they were holding Joe’s former mentor._

“Arthur Strauss,” Ryan said. 

“That’s right,” Gore said.

“Is he dead?”

“No,” said the warden. “But another inmate is. We know that Strauss didn’t kill him, but we think he convinced someone to do it for him.”

Ryan sat up, the molten lead waves of his hangover sloshing in his head. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, begging for equilibrium. “That’s what Strauss does,” he said. “What did the dead guy do to him?”

“Nothing,” said Gore. “Not as far as we can tell. I don’t even think they knew each other. We think he was provoking someone.”

“Oh yeah? Who?”

“You, Mr. Hardy,” Gore told him. “Strauss has said he’ll tell everything, but only to you. In person.”

Even in his addled state, Ryan was almost certain that Joe had not been able to contact Strauss inside the prison. So what was the end game? Strauss had been delighted to pick at Ryan’s motivations when they last spoke; just because his observations had been infuriating didn’t mean they were _wrong_. Maybe Strauss was seeking a proxy to keep himself connected to the action. 

It didn’t seem quite right, though. Strauss, unlike his former pupil, wasn’t an attention-seeker. No matter the purpose, Ryan thought, Arthur Strauss had once again calculated correctly. There was no way Ryan could resist the invitation. There was that old drive: if someone served up death on a platter, Ryan had to look.

“Give me an hour,” he told Gore, and ended the call.

***

Dr. Arthur Strauss, dressed in the garish orange jumpsuit, looked, as always, like the cat who had vivisected the canary. If he ever wore any other expression, Ryan suspected he had been the only one who had seen it, who had gotten to observe in delightful detail as Mike had pulverized his hand. 

Thinking about Mike made Ryan feel conflicted. He was disgusted, he was aroused. In his mind he saw Mike’s lips: begging, bleeding.

_Please._

_Fuck me._

_I want you to hurt me._

_Stop._

_Please._

Ryan shook it off and squared his jaw, greeting Strauss with a tight and mirthless smile. 

“Well,” Strauss said, “if it isn’t my favorite artist.”

“I’m an artist, I’m a poet,” Ryan said, sitting across from Strauss at the long metal table to which the good doctor was shackled. “Nobody believes I’m a regular guy.”

Strauss smiled. “I was about to say that your medium is denial, but I suspect that’s changed since last we spoke.”

“A lot of things have changed,” Ryan said. “You know, you didn’t have to kill someone to get my attention.”

Strauss surged forward, his belly pressed against the edge of the table, hands straining against the short chains and thick manacles. “That is the _only_ way to get your attention.” 

The guard to Strauss’s left took hold of his shoulder and shoved him backward. The bolts holding the table’s legs to the floor groaned. 

Strauss raised his hands as far as he could with his limited capacity for movement. “The mad dog must be kept on his chain,” he said, his smile secretive. 

The guard gave him a sour look.

“So, mad dog,” Ryan said, “how’s the paw?”

“Rather less intact,” said Strauss, musing rather than mourning.

“Less intact than hanging by threads?”

Strauss held up his bandaged hand. “I lost the thumb not two days ago. I defended it as long as I could, but medicine here hasn’t quite come up past Civil War level.”

“Oh, shame,” Ryan said. “I could have given you a hand. So to speak.” He laughed.

It looked as if Strauss hadn’t even registered the joke. “I don’t think you have the requisite skill with knives,” he said, “though I could have changed that if we had known each other sooner.”

“If that was the case, believe me, you would have had an extra hole in your face to breathe through years ago.” 

“See what I mean?” asked Strauss. “Guns are so impersonal.”

“I’m not getting personal with you,” Ryan said.

“But you get very personal with Joe.”

Ryan stared at Strauss for a few long seconds then looked up at the guard. “Can we have a minute?”

“That’s not a good idea, Mr. Hardy.” The guy’s eyes flickered toward the one-way mirror across from them. He was young, stout—probably ex-military—but had a very non-regulation soul patch under his lower lip. 

“Listen,” Ryan said, “he said he’d talk to me and only me. I know you record everything that goes on in this room. So what difference does it make?”

“He’s dangerous,” said the guard.

Ryan bit back a laugh. “I think Dr. Strauss here can tell you that I’m pretty dangerous myself.”

“More so than anyone else I’ve met,” said Strauss. “I could plead with you not to leave me alone with him, but I suspect that’s something you’d ignore.”

A couple more looks at Ryan, then back at the window, and the guard shifted his weight. “Five minutes,” he said. 

Ryan nodded.

The guard stepped away, gave one last glance toward the table, and slipped out the door.

Leaning in, Ryan said, “For a guy who claims to be so different from Joe Carroll, you sure like to talk about him a lot.”

“This time, I’d like _you_ to talk about Joe,” Strauss said. “Or, to be more specific, your relationship with him.”

“Yeah, I’m obsessed with him. I mirror his behavior. Blah, blah, blah,” Ryan said. “I’ve heard all that shit from you before, Dr. Strauss. If you brought me all the way out here for a rehash I’ll just go ahead and call that guard back in.”

“What a fine student you would have made, Ryan Hardy,” Strauss said. “It would almost have been too easy. You did not need to be directed; your path was already clear.”

“You’re telling me I’m a better killer than Joe,” Ryan said. “Just because I put holes in a bunch of sick fucks who had it coming anyway.”

Strauss tilted his chin, looking at Ryan with an unblinking gaze. “Those are your words, not mine. Your very own excuses. You may spit them at me for the sake of the listening walls in here, but you and I know better.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” Ryan said.

“I know everything about you,” said Strauss. “Your skin is transparent. One only needs the right eyes to look. You are the perfect machine. Some come to me with their heads so muddled, silently begging for guidance because they aren’t yet sure how to put those needs into words.”

“Like Joe?”

“Like Joe,” said Strauss. 

“Well,” Ryan said, “I guess I should take what you said as some kind of fucked up compliment. But I don’t trust you. I don’t _like_ you. And I’m about five seconds away from calling the guard back in. So stop wasting my time.”

“I know you’re fucking him,” Strauss said.

Ryan covered his surprise with a laugh. “Oh, so now I’m so obsessed with Joe I have to get in his pants? You’re really grasping, Doctor.”

Strauss’s expression went dark again. “No,” he said. “It’s Joe who’s grasping. He needs someone to lean on, to prop him up. Someone to idolize.”

Ryan said nothing.

“I can see you getting angry,” said Strauss. “You feel the need to defend him. Little boy lost. You are his crutch, Ryan.”

“Stop.”

“Just like last time. You hear me even though you don’t want to,” Strauss said. “You believe me. Down in that hollow metal bowl you mistakenly call a heart.”

“You’re wrong,” Ryan said. “Wrong about Joe, and wrong about me.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Let me tell you something, Arthur,” Ryan said. “It doesn’t matter what you think. You’re in here. Joe’s out there. And I’m about to walk out, too.” He started to get up.

“You know he cried the first time,” Strauss said.

“The first time what?” Ryan asked. “That he killed for you?”

“The first time I fucked him. Joe was a very compliant boy, but I could already see his ego getting in the way. He had to be tamed.” 

“Shut up.”

“Don’t believe it?” Strauss said. “Ask him. Ask him when you go to him. I bent him over my metal table. The same one that was in my house. When I let him up I could see the tears shivering there on the steel.”

“You’re a fucking liar,” Ryan said.

“Do you know what he did, Ryan?” Strauss asked. “With the tears still on his face? He _thanked me_.”

Strauss’s statement hung in the air between them only a moment, then Ryan was up and at his throat, hands ready to squeeze the life out of him.

“Mr. Hardy!” the guard called, coming into the room. “Stand down!”

In the second that Ryan’s grip loosened on hearing the guard’s order, Strauss whispered, “Do it.”

Ryan looked back into the man’s face in shock. Then he understood. Suicide by the only man he could truly trust to kill him. At the same time he saw it was a trap, Ryan found he didn’t care. The man had hurt Joe. Had trespassed on his territory.

Ryan smiled, and he saw in Strauss’s eyes that the doctor saw it, too. Ryan dug his fingers hard into the skin of Strauss’s neck. Petechiae blew up like fireworks in his eyes. Ryan’s hand felt like it was in an acid bath but he couldn’t stop. Wouldn’t.

The guard called from the doorway. “Step away, Mr. Hardy. I won’t ask you again.”

Panic fluttered across Strauss’s reddening face: a visible battle between his mind’s decision and his body’s instinct for self-preservation. 

_Is this personal enough, Doctor?_

Hearing the slap of hard-soled shoes on linoleum, Ryan bore down. A split second before the guards crashed into him, knocking him to the floor, he heard the crack of Strauss’s larynx as it separated, the trachea crumbling in his grip like wet paper. 

Strauss slumped over, drooling blood, his face purple.

The guard was going for his taser, but his own disdain for Strauss slowed him down. Ryan kicked the guy in the face and sent the weapon skidding across the floor. He scrambled over to pick it up with his left hand, swung it around, and nailed the next guard in the chest with the darts just as he came through the door. He went down twitching and screaming. 

Ryan took his gun, biting the inside of his cheek to mitigate the pain in his hand. 

Later, he would reflect that his only regret about the situation hadn’t been the two guards he’d had to kill on his way out of the prison, or the fact that he’d nearly taken off the hood of his car barreling through the razor wire-topped gates. It was that he had not been able to take his time with Strauss. 

Joe preferred knives, but guns had always felt right to Ryan. He liked their heft, he liked the kick as it traveled through his bones, blowing through doors within him to open that passageway. The one that was ready to receive death. The bullets opened a passage in his victims as well—for that one brief moment they were connected, the giver and the taker. Between the two of them was the fulfillment Ryan needed.

But he had no time to savor. He had to get to Joe. And so many links in the chain needed severing before that could happen. 

***

Once he’d gotten his heart rate under control, Ryan took out his phone. He couldn’t wait too long to contact Turner. To contact Claire, really, but unless he was an idiot, Turner would have barred her from any phone or internet access once Ryan said the word “media.”

But the news coming down from Rikers would be fresh, and if the agents were far enough on edge, Claire could slip through their defenses. But she would only run if Ryan spoke with her

He took a deep, searing breath, pulled over, and dialed.

“You're done, Hardy,” Turner said without preface. "Don't make it any harder on yourself."

“I need to talk to Claire,” Ryan said, not giving the agent a chance to get a word in. “It’s urgent.”

“Not going to happen,” Turner told him. “We’re triangulating your location now. The 114th is already scrambled.”

“I’ll give myself up,” said Ryan. “If you let me talk to Claire, I’ll come in.”

“And if I don’t?” Turner asked.

“Joe Carroll kills a hundred more people before you take your next breath.”

“What did Strauss tell you?”

“No dice, Turner,” said Ryan.”Put me on with Claire or you get nothing.”

“What about these hundreds of people?” Turner asked.

“You’re going to save them, because I’m going to tell you what Carroll’s next move is,” Ryan said. “Jesus, man. I’m going to prison for a long time. Probably life. I just want to tell the woman I just found out isn’t dead that I’m sorry for treating her like shit.”

“Those lives are on your head—”

“You’re stalling, Turner.”

“Fine.” The agent was only half covering the phone’s mouthpiece, so Ryan could hear him yell, “Get Ms. Matthews over here.” 

There was shuffling in the background, indistinct voices. Then Turner said, “One minute, Hardy.”

A couple seconds pause, and a weak voice said, “Ryan?”

“Claire.”

“What did you do?”

“We don’t have time for that,” Ryan said. “Are you on speaker? Can they hear us?”

“I don’t think so,” said Claire.

“Good. I need you to listen, and I need you to say what I tell you to, exactly as I say it.”

“Okay,” she said. 

Ryan wondered whether Claire was bent double, clutching the phone in both hands—her peculiar, squirrel-like response to fear. It had almost cracked him up a couple of times, and he had to spit out his next words to avoid laughing into the phone at the image. “I can’t get Joe,” he said. “But you can. Say, ‘okay.’”

“Okay,” said Claire.

Ah, there it was. In that one word—the old steely resolve. Ryan could almost hear her back straighten. He used to fancy he heard a little of himself in that. Claire could be very brave at times, but she couldn’t pull the trigger when it counted, which was why Joe was going to take her apart piece by wet, screaming piece.

He’d be none too happy about the distraction, but Ryan liked to think Joe would appreciate his little gift when all was said and done.

“Remember this,” he told Claire. “I’m only going to say it once. He’s in a compound. The name is Korban. K-O-R-B-A-N. Take Palisades to Pomona, then 202 west. Say, ‘I’ll see you again.’”

“I’ll see you again.” Her voice was flat.

It annoyed Ryan. A little enthusiasm wouldn’t hurt, even if it was faked. “Do _not_ call Mike. He’ll try to stop you. I’m buying you time, Claire.”

“Thank you,” she said. 

It was off-script, but it worked. 

“Tell the people at the gate who you are,” Ryan said. “They won’t hurt you. Now say, ‘I love you, too.’” The last little dig was dirty as hell, but he couldn’t resist.

And as he expected, she stumbled. 

“Come on, Claire. Sell it.” 

“I love you, too,” she said, all in a rush.

The next voice on the line was Turner’s. “Tell us what Strauss said.”

Ryan didn’t miss a beat. “He said Joe thinks of himself not as a messenger, but a _redeemer_. He emphasized that word.”

“So what?” Turner said. “That tells me nothing.”

“No, it gives you a location,” Ryan said. “Cathedral of the Holy Redeemer on 73rd. It’s the second-biggest church in the city. Joe wants an audience of the faithful.”

“Jesus Christ,” Turner said, half under his breath.

“Something like that,” said Ryan, and ended the call.

He pulled open the glove box and withdrew the two service pistols he’d taken off the dead guards. The one he’d taken from the guy he tasered was still stuffed in his waistband. Ryan swung out of the car, dropped the phone on the pavement and smashed it with the heel of his boot. He kicked it below the undercarriage and crouched by the shoulder behind the rear tire to wait for the first responding unit to emerge from behind the stand of trees at the far curve of the road.

***

There had been one fat, grizzled old-timer in the car that swung around 19th Avenue, its deck blazing and sirens high. The other guy had been young—like, rookie young. Oddly enough, the vet was the one who cried and sniffled after Ryan shot his partner in the temple, and he got a gut shot for his troubles.

Ryan was already halfway to the Kennedy Bridge when the next responders showed up. It would take them a little while to post the APB on the car he’d taken, and there was no way the NYPD would light up one of its own cruisers without certainty. Civilians were a different matter, of course. The 114th back in Astoria had probably already given his personal car the Swiss cheese treatment just to be safe. That would look great at tomorrow’s briefing.

As long as he had a few minutes to get across the bridge, Ryan could ditch the black-and-white and take the train to Mike’s. 

As he flew lights-on through the Emergency Vehicle lane, Ryan let himself feel the full measure of his disdain for law enforcement—cops and FBI agents alike. At their best, they were hobbled by regulation. At their worst, greed layered on top of a fatally narrow scope bought them a department casket and twenty-one guns long after the damn guns would have been useful. 

Just past the edge of Wards Island, he ejected the empty magazine from one of the pistols onto the seat and tossed the gun out and into the water. He ditched the clip in a trash can after leaving the car outside a North Harlem charter school. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so fucking sad that an empty cruiser would be the greatest police presence outside the school that year.

Ryan heard rustling beyond the door when he knocked, but it wasn’t much of a gamble that Mike would be home, what with his face fucked up as badly as it was. Thinking about the blows he’d landed—their angles, trajectories, impact sites—made him anxious to see that face again, to observe the corrupting bruises as they crept outward, each little imprint its own Ground Zero.

 _Shit. Maybe I_ am _an artist._

“Who is it?” The low voice that came from behind the door wasn’t only muffled because of the plank of wood between them. Mike’s words themselves sounded mushy.

“Uh…hey, buddy.”

“Ryan?”

“Can I come in?”

A pause. “Are you fucking kidding me?” Mike said. The “f” came out sounding like “th.” “Leave or I’m calling in everybody.”

Ryan leaned his shoulder against the door and raised his voice. “They’re already on top of me, man. I killed Strauss. Over at Rikers.”

“You’re full of shit,” said Mike, but with a cautious edge of curiosity in his tone.

“I’m not,” Ryan said. “I finished what you started, Mike. I ripped his fucking windpipe out of his neck.”

A door down the hall opened and a middle-aged woman poked her head out, prepared to scold. When Ryan raised one of his two pistols and aimed it down the hall toward her, she shut the door so hard and so quickly she almost slammed her own face in it. Ryan bit back a chuckle.

“Come on, Mikey,” Ryan said. “Let me apologize. I fucked up. I keep fucking up.”

“Just…go away, Ryan.”

He sighed, tapping on the wood this time with the barrel of the gun. “Max told me what you said.”

Ryan righted himself and tucked the gun in his waistband as he heard the chain lock slide away. The face that greeted him wasn’t wrecked, but it wasn’t a pretty sight, either. A scabbed line bisected Mike’s bottom lip, and the skin around it was vivid red—almost alluring if it didn’t look like it would crack and geyser blood at any moment. _Maybe even if it did._

Even though the rent on his cheek (which probably needed stitches but at least had the benefit of a butterfly bandage) wasn’t long, swelling had partially closed Mike’s left eye and he was purple from temple to chin. 

“Jesus,” Ryan said. “Mike, I’m so sorry. I lost my head.”

Mike stepped away, opening the door to let Ryan in. “Don’t apologize if you don’t mean it,” he said. 

“I do,” said Ryan. “I didn’t want you to get hurt. Not…well, not this way. It’s Claire. I can’t trust myself when it comes to her.”

“Yeah, well, people make shitty decisions on who they care about,” Mike said. The bitterness in his voice was naked and unmistakable. 

“I’m sorry for that, too,” Ryan said. “I led you on.”

“No, you didn’t,” Mike said. “I jumped at the chance. I knew you were worked up, but I took everything you gave me and I wanted more.” He turned away, possibly to hide tears, though his voice was already thick from the injuries. “And the fucked-up thing is, even after all this—even after the car—I still want you. I’m damaged, Ryan.” Mike tapped his temple with a fingertip and winced at the stab of pain. “I’m not right up here. I’m incapable of choosing the right person to fall for.”

“Trust me,” Ryan said. “Your relationship choices can’t be shittier than mine.”

Mike turned, tears glistening on his eyelids but not falling. “You have Claire.”

Ryan shook his head. “Claire doesn’t want me.”

“What?”

“She told me,” said Ryan. “After Joe is gone, she’s going back to Arizona to be with Joey. And she told me not to follow her.”

“But with Joe out of the picture—”

“I’m ruined, Mike,” Ryan said. “You’re not. I can’t be what you want me to be for you, but you still have a chance with Max. With _somebody_. Joe Carroll is all I have.”

“I won’t believe that,” Mike said.

“Then you’re delusional,” Ryan said. “You need to get as far away from me as possible. Don’t even think about me again. If you stick around, you’ll die.”

Mike paused for a moment. “I can’t change your mind about that. It’s pretty clear,” he said. “All I can do is show you it’s not true by backing you up.”

“It’s suicide,” Ryan told him. “You’re walking to your death. I’m fucking _begging_ you. Leave me alone.”

Mike stepped closer, one of the heavy, pendulous tears finally slipping over his pulped cheek. “I can’t just stop seeing you. Can’t just stop thinking about you. It doesn’t work that way.”

Ryan turned his head away, not to avoid looking at the damage he’d inflicted but at the tears. 

Mike reached out and turned Ryan’s head back toward him with gentle fingers on his chin. “It’s okay, Ryan. I know you don’t feel the same. I know, okay?” Mike put a warm hand over Ryan’s sternum, and another at his hip. “But you can’t get inside my head and just force yourself out.”

The hand trailed from Ryan’s chest to his belt.

“Mike, stop.”

“Please,” Mike said, whispering the words close to Ryan’s shoulder. “Just let me do this for you. One more time. Please.”

Ryan took a deep breath, but said nothing as Mike unbuckled his belt and slid to his knees. 

Mike lowered his zipper, speaking Ryan’s name over and over, warm breath washing over Ryan’s groin. In spite of himself, he felt himself starting to get hard, savoring the woozy plummet of his blood. The air in the apartment was cool and medicine-scented, but all that disappeared under the sensation of Mike’s warm mouth. Ryan felt the scab on Mike’s lips scraping along the underside of his cock and had to try very hard not to come right then. 

“You shouldn’t—” he started, but then Mike hummed around him and he clenched his fists and stopped talking. 

Ryan extended a hand and placed it on the back of Mike’s head, but pulled away in shock when he realized he had expected to feel Joe’s coarse waves there instead. It was grotesque and symmetrical—being here, fucking Mike Weston’s busted face, thinking about Joe and hoping that Joe thought about him while he was fucking Emma. 

At that, all the anger drained away. Mike had a way of doing that, but it wasn’t because his presence was a comfort. The kid was a vessel. A receptacle. Ryan poured out all of his shit on Mike and Mike just kept taking it. Coming back again and again like a beaten dog. 

Ryan had told the truth, at least in that: if Mike kept trailing after him, he’d end up dead. Joe would see to it. And if it came down to a choice between Joe and Mike’s life…Ryan would always choose Joe.

All the pontificating wasn’t doing any favors for Ryan’s arousal, even though Mike was sucking him like it was the last thing he’d ever do. Hell, maybe that would be the merciful option: hold one of his pistols to the kid’s temple and put him down. After he finished, of course. Ryan wasn’t about to blueball himself over a decision about how and when Mike was going to die. And he certainly wasn’t going to jerk off over the kid’s corpse. He might be a killer, but he had at least that much self-respect. 

Ryan reached behind him, fingered the stock of the gun that was sliding further into his pants as Mike yanked on them, desperate for better access. He almost wrapped his fingers around the grip, tracing the slim, tempting half-moon of the trigger. This would be easier. Joe would make Mike suffer. 

But then Ryan’s cock slipped into the back of Mike’s throat and reason shorted out for a second.

“Yeah,” Ryan said. “Come on.” When he looked down, Mike was searching his face, still pleading for approval. “Good,” Ryan added. “Faster.”

Mike obliged, wrapping his thumb and forefinger around the base of Ryan’s cock, practically choking himself in his urgency. 

Ryan felt the scab on Mike’s lips give way, and like that he was right on the edge again. “Oh, fuck yeah,” he said. 

If there was pain, Mike was either too ecstatic or too devoted for it to register. Balancing on the brink, Ryan closed his eyes for a second, because—God—if he looked down and Mike was sucking him off with a mouthful of blood Ryan was going to come so hard it hurt. 

“Fuck. Come on,” he said. He took a deep breath and opened his eyes. A thread of pink saliva trailed down the length of Ryan’s cock from Mike’s lips and that was all it took. “Gonna come,” he said. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. Oh, yeah. Don’t stop.”

Just before orgasm overtook him, Ryan said, “ _Joe_.”

Abruptly the pressure and heat were gone, but Ryan was already coming. His eyes flew open.

Mike had flinched back, shock and disgust plain on his face. Blood and semen dripped from his chin down his neck, tracing the paths of straining tendons there. 

If Ryan could have come again, he would have. 

Then Mike spat the viscous mixture all over Ryan’s jeans—once, twice. He scrubbed at his lips with his sleeve, heedless of the pain, tipping backward and falling on his ass.

“No,” he said. “No, no. It’s not true.”

Ryan sighed and tucked his bloody cock back into his boxers. “Now do you understand?”

“You’re lying, Ryan,” he said. “Tell me you’re fucking lying.”

Shaking his head and zipping up, Ryan said, “Sorry, kid.”

Mike didn’t try to hold back the tears this time. “You’re fucking _Joe Carroll_?”

“I told you he was all I had.”

“Oh, God,” Mike said, scrambling backward on the carpet. “You…you sick _fuck_. Jesus. Was it ever about Claire?”

“For a while,” Ryan said. “But it’s not the same. Nobody is. Except Joe. Me and Joe, we’re exactly alike. I see that now.”

Mike let out a thick sob. 

“Claire is already on her way to him,” Ryan said. 

“You tipped Claire off? You sent her to get killed?”

“She comes between Joe and me,” said Ryan. “And so do you. If you’re smart, Mikey, you’ll forget about me. You’ll go find Lily Gray and you’ll forget Ryan Hardy exists.”

“No,” Mike said, struggling to get to his feet. “The two of you…together? It can’t happen. It can’t. Fuck…oh, God. Did you kill that girl? Gisele?”

Ryan nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “And I liked doing it. You gonna kill me now, Mike?”

“I’m going to kill Joe Carroll,” he said. “You’re going to take me to him.”

“The hell I am. I’ve already chosen Joe. If you walk into this, one of us will kill you. So run, Mike.”

Mike shook his head, tears and blood streaming into his shirt collar. “You wouldn’t kill me.”

Ryan pulled one of the guns from his waistband and extended it, grip-first, to Mike. “I would. So you’d better take me out first. Or this will only end one way.”

Shaking with fury and betrayal, Mike looked down at the gun Ryan offered. His panicked gaze danced between the weapon and Ryan’s face. 

Ryan could see him moving his fingers, his hand jerking with indecision. Then Mike raised both hands to his face and wailed. “God _dammit_ , Ryan. Why? _Why_?”

“Make the smart choice, Mike,” said Ryan. “Stay here.” He drew his hand back and clipped Mike on the temple with the barrel of the gun. Mike’s knees buckled and he collapsed, drooling blood onto his carpet with each breath.

***

This time, Ryan didn’t sneak in at the side of the compound. He walked right in the front gate. With a gun in each hand, he shot three of the cult members—one in the head, one in the neck, and one in the heart—and the rest of them scattered into the trees.

Ryan made his way straight to the house he’d come to think of as Joe’s. The only possible obstacle between him and Joe was Emma. Unlike the others, she was quick…and she was fearless. And Ryan was certain that the gunfire had drawn the attention of everyone inside the main building. 

Each forefinger ever on its trigger and not at the side of the gun, he moved as quietly as he could through the sodden leaves. 

Skirting the front entrance to slip around the side of the house, Ryan kept low underneath the few windows. Back to the door he’d come through the last time he’d visited Joe here. Fate (or something) must have been on his side, at least for the moment, because he heard the heavy bolt slide free just as he rounded the corner. 

The muzzle of a Ruger emerged, a small, pale hand around its grip. Ryan took two steps, dropped one of his guns and grabbed the wrist. Unlike him, Emma had kept her finger outside of the trigger guard, so the gun didn’t fire as he wrenched it out of her hand. She opened her mouth, either to speak or to scream, but Ryan took hold of her hair and knocked her head hard against the heavy door.

She crumpled in a heap by the threshold. 

“Emma?” Joe called from inside the house.

“She can’t come to the door right now,” Ryan said, picking up his gun and tucking both pistols back into his waistband.

“Ryan!” The voice shouting in the background was Claire’s.

Joe opened the screen door. His jaw was tight, his brow furrowed. No welcoming smile to be had.

It was understandable, though, considering that Ryan had just sent him an unsavory gift in the form of his furious ex-wife.

“I’m not certain I should invite you in,” Joe said. “I wasn’t even sure you’d turn up.”

“Come on, Joe,” said Ryan. “I wouldn’t miss this.”

“I’d feel a bit better if I knew your own happy reunion was just as much a surprise,” Joe said, the sourness in his tone apparent.

“I almost killed the messenger,” Ryan said.

At that, Joe couldn’t repress a tiny smile. It was knocked off his face in a few seconds, though. 

Ryan heard a meaty thump and Joe stumbled forward, almost falling off the stoop into Ryan’s arms. 

Joe swayed backward, and something hard and heavy clattered onto the wood floor behind him. 

Gripping Joe’s arm, Ryan shouldered past him into the room. On the ground was a fireplace poker, ringed with bright jewels of blood. Joe’s blood.

Claire stood a few paces back, her eyes wild.

“Why?” Joe asked.

It was so wounded, so nearly innocent, that Ryan’s heart clenched.

Claire’s response was to break the wineglass she held against the table beside her and lunge out, slashing at Joe’s face. His reflexes were slowed from shock and he didn’t move away quickly enough. A vivid red line appeared on his stubble-peppered cheek, the skin peeling open in slow motion to drool blood through the maze of coarse hairs. 

Joe brought his hand up to his face. “Fuck!” All the hurt had gone. Now he was just angry.

Ryan slipped in past Joe, fully expecting Claire to make the mistake she did, which was lowering the broken wine glass as soon as she saw him. He drew his arm up and dealt her a vicious backhand to the face.

She went sprawling, the glass flying from her grip, as Ryan yelled and clutched his hand. At this point he’d need a cast, which probably wasn’t forthcoming considering his fugitive status.

“Really, Claire?” Joe said. “Again?”

Claire was holding trembling fingers to a bleeding lip, shock and indignation making her eyes almost comically wide.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Ryan told her.

“I see your year in witness protection hasn’t made you any less of a cold-hearted bitch,” Joe said to Claire. He looked at his bloody palm in disbelief. “The shoulder I can understand, but the _face_? Why the face, Claire? It happens to be one of my prized assets.”

“Ryan?” Claire asked. “What’s going on?”

“Eyes front, dear,” said Joe. “You’re talking to me at the moment.”

“Fuck you,” Claire said, her lips ringed with a froth of pink. “You were always vain. One of the hundreds of things I couldn’t stand about you.”

Joe rolled his eyes. “Dear God. You just can’t help dredging up the past. In every argument we have.” He turned to Ryan. “I really could have done without this.”

“How do you think I feel?” Ryan asked.

“What are you talking about?” Claire shouted. “What the hell is going on?”

“Could you shut up a minute, please?” Ryan said. Speaking to Joe again, he said, “I get it.”

“You’re both fucking crazy,” Claire said, still too stunned to get up from the floor. Blood from her lip wound in a lazy curve down her neck. “It’s a dream. I’ve stepped into—Jesus, I don’t know! Some kind of parallel universe or something.”

“I assure you this is all very real,” Joe said.

“We should get you patched up,” Ryan told him.

“Her first,” Joe said. “We can’t have any more of _that_.” 

“Yeah,” Ryan said. “Next thing you know she’ll be ruining my pretty face.”

“Don’t say ‘ _ruined_ ,’” Joe said, dabbing at the cut again. “It isn’t ruined.” He was almost pouting.

Claire barked a laugh in pure hysteria. “I’m dead,” she said. “This is hell.”

“Not yet, darling,” Joe said. “Will you hold her, please?”

Claire tried to scuttle away when Ryan walked over to her, but he took hold of her upper arm and her hair and hauled her upright.

She spat blood into his face.

“That’s the second time that’s happened today,” Ryan said, curling his fingers tightly enough in her hair that he felt several strands separate from the scalp. He wiped his face with the other hand, then smeared the blood and spittle on Claire’s blouse.

“You’re insane,” Claire said in a voice choked with pain

“Why are you mad at me?” Ryan asked. “You’re the one with a thing for killers.”

Joe had pulled a lamp from the wall and ripped the cord out (now that was a sweet bit of reminiscence for Ryan). He pried Claire’s hands from Ryan’s wrist and bound them behind her back with the cord. She winced but did not voice any protest, staring daggers at Ryan.

“Have you got any rope?” Joe asked. 

Ryan shook his head.

“This is why I hate living in the sticks,” Joe said. “We’re undersupplied and there’s nothing bloody useful around for miles.” He passed Claire over to Ryan’s arms. “Another cord it is, then. I have a feeling we won’t be staying long enough for the lack of light to matter.”

Joe mutilated another lamp and the two of them tied Claire to the radiator. 

Ryan couldn’t decide whether he thought her silence was admirable or annoying, considering the fat tears that kept rolling down her cheeks.

Joe crouched beside Claire and went to brush a lock of hair from her face. She flinched violently away. “Darling,” he said, “I really would rather not gag you, but I need you to be quiet for a while. Ryan and I need to have a little chat.”

“I hate you,” Claire said in a hoarse whisper.

Joe kissed her forehead before he stood. “I know.” He turned to face Ryan. “I’m very cross with you.”

Ryan spread out his arms, palms up. “Lay it on me.”

“Not that having my dear, _dead_ ex-wife show up at my door wasn’t shock enough,” Joe said. He walked over to the gnarled cedar wardrobe, pulled a red hooded sweatshirt from a hanger, and used the sleeve to dab at his face, swearing under his breath. “I’ve heard that you killed four policemen on top of giving my old mentor a rather nasty death.”

“Two prison guards, two cops,” Ryan said. “And don’t get indignant. You don’t care about them.”

“I do care about Dr. Strauss,” Joe said.

“Strauss killed himself,” said Ryan. “He just used me to do it. And I was more than happy to oblige.”

“Still, it wasn’t very nice, Ryan.”

“Neither was sleeping with Emma. Again.”

“Emma?” said Claire.

Both Ryan and Joe turned toward her. “Shut up, Claire.”

“And Strauss wasn’t very nice,” Ryan said to Joe. “You of all people should know that.”

Joe was trying to wrap the sweatshirt crosswise over his shoulder, but he gritted his teeth every time he tried to move his left arm. “Will you help me with this damned thing?”

Ryan nodded. He took the shirt from Joe, draping the thickest part of it over the wound on his back and cinching it by tying the sleeves below the opposite arm.

“Ouch,” Joe said. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Ryan said. “Joe, he told me what he did to you. He did it to provoke me, and it worked.”

“What he—” Joe started. “Oh, yes. Really, Ryan, I haven’t thought about that in years.”

“Bullshit.”

“Honestly.”

“Joe,” Ryan said. “He _raped_ you. More than once. Jesus, you were just a kid.”

Joe turned away slightly, staring at the screen door instead of looking at Ryan. “I didn’t see it that way. Well, not after a while. You have to understand, Ryan. It was the first hint of affection, of love, I had ever gotten from an adult.”

“That wasn’t love,” said Ryan.

“As you said, I was very young,” said Joe. “My parents weren’t exactly the touchy-feely type. And my uncle saw me as nothing more than a burden for the few weeks before he packed me off across the pond.”

“It doesn’t excuse what Strauss did,” said Ryan, his voice a little softer now.

“I know,” said Joe, a rueful smile just touching the corners of his mouth. “To be honest, I haven’t been entirely successful in understanding the concept of love.” He turned to Claire. “No offense, dear.”

Ryan stepped closer, pulling Joe toward him, forcing him to look in his eyes. “I don’t think that’s true,” he said. “Listen, back in the cabin you said you would worship me if I worshiped you in return. And I _have_ , Joe. Not just since then, but almost since the day we met.” He reached up and smudged a bit of drying blood away from Joe’s lips. “I was jealous. I wanted you. I wanted to _be_ you. Not to be tied down by duty or responsibility anymore.”

Joe took the hand that Ryan had brushed his cheek with and held it against his chest. “There’s where you’ve underestimated yourself,” he said. “I felt I owed something to Dr. Strauss, because I needed a teacher. But you, Ryan? You’ve always been a killer.”

“No!” Claire shouted from across the room.

Joe heaved a histrionic sigh. “I won’t warn you again,” he told Claire. “Ryan and I are having a _moment_ here.” He turned back to Ryan. “I’m afraid envy was my sin as well. And—you’re right—pride,” Joe gestured with his free hand to the scabbing cut on his cheek. “But that’s neither here nor there. I knew, though, when you told me you’d killed the man who murdered your father, that you needed no one to push you forward. No one to guide you. You are pure, Ryan.”

“I’m sorry, Joe,” Ryan said. “For everything. Mike—” he tipped his head toward Claire, “—her, everything.”

“You have needs that must be met,” Joe said. “As do I.”

“This time,” Ryan said, “I need you to be the only one. From now on.”

“If we stop all this chasing around. The hiding, the subterfuge,” Joe said. “I want you to come with me. Will you?”

“Yeah,” Ryan said, “I will.”

Joe smiled. 

Since it was in keeping with his damn-the-consequences attitude anyway, Ryan curled a hand around the back of Joe’s neck and pulled him in for a kiss. Joe didn’t resist, nor did he push or demand. The kiss was sweet, lingering, oblivious—as if the room had shrunk down around them and they stood inside a globe where even the soft music of Claire’s sobbing couldn’t reach their ears.

The screen door shrieked and the spell was broken.

A dazed voice called into the room, “Joe, it’s Ryan—” Emma stopped cold.

Ryan and Joe, still in their embrace, looked toward the door.

“—Hardy,” Emma finished, her jaw dropping down so far it looked parodic, like a mask. The hand she held her gun in sank in slow motion to her side.

Joe raised Ryan’s hand to his lips and kissed the ruined knuckles. “I’m aware,” he said.

“What is this?” Emma asked. “Joe, what’s going on?”

“I’m afraid it’s exactly what it looks like,” Joe said, letting go of Ryan’s hand for the moment.

“You’re hurt,” said Emma. The full weight of the situation had clearly not descended quite yet.

“On the contrary,” Joe said. “I’ve never felt better.”

“Emma,” Claire called. “Run.” 

If it was possible for her to look more gobsmacked, Ryan was sure she did at that moment. “Claire? You’re _dead_.”

“I wish,” Claire said.

“You may want to listen to Claire, Emma darling,” Joe said. “Ryan and I will be leaving shortly. It’s going to get a bit chaotic after that.”

“What do you mean, ‘leaving'?”

Leaving Ryan’s side for a moment, Joe took a couple steps toward Emma, leaning toward her and addressing her in a slow, measured voice as if she were an idiot child. “It means that Ryan and I are leaving this compound. Together. You can go wherever you like, or you can stay here with Claire and whatever else of the rabble Ryan didn’t gun down. Frankly, I don’t care.”

“No,” Emma said. “No. This isn’t real. You said—”

Joe held up a hand. “I said a lot of things. Be honest with yourself for once, Emma. You’re very suggestible. In fact, why don’t you give me that gun?”

Emma took a step back, wide-eyed, raising the pistol toward Ryan. It looked far too heavy for her tiny frame, and the fact that she was shaking did her no favors, either. “I’ll shoot him,” she said. “Right now. For you, Joe.”

Joe’s eyes narrowed. There was nothing teasing or genial in his manner anymore—it was all venom. “If you hurt him, I’ll kill you. And it won’t be quick or painless.”

Keeping the weapon unwavering in its aim, Emma did something that Ryan had never seen her do and in all honesty hadn’t thought her capable of. She started to cry. “I thought—”

“You thought what?” Joe asked. “That I _loved_ you? Oh, my dear girl. You were very important to me. At times you did try my patience, true, but your help was crucial. And it didn’t hurt that you were absolutely ruthless. But not to see this coming, well, you had to be a _bit_ delusional, yes?”

His words hit Emma like a physical blow; she stumbled and the gun dipped, but only for a moment.

“You know better than anyone,” he continued. “Better than Claire, even. It’s always been Ryan.”

Emma shook her head, the tears flowing freely now.

“Kill them!” Claire shouted. 

“Fuck you, Joe,” Emma said, her voice a tear-choked whisper.

“Not anymore,” Ryan said.

“He doesn’t care about you,” Emma told Ryan. “Joe doesn’t care about anyone but himself.” She looked at Joe. “Would you have sacrificed me, Joe? Like the others? If it came down to it, would you have killed me?”

“Never,” Joe said, looking over at Ryan with a tiny smile. “I would have let him kill you.”

Emma gave Ryan one more long look of pure hatred, then she swiveled and turned the gun on Joe.

Claire screamed when the gunshot rang through the tiny space. Joe had ducked down on instinct, but he hadn’t needed to.

Emma stood swaying on her feet, the gun dangling from one finger. She was upright long enough for the entry wound in her forehead from Ryan’s bullet to ooze a thin line of blood that curved down on one side of her nose. Then she toppled over, what was left of her skull impacting the blood-misted floor with a wet smack.

“You cut that a bit close,” Joe said to Ryan.

Ryan shrugged. “I honestly didn’t expect it.” 

Joe shook his head. “Like I said. Ruthless. In any case, beautifully done. Watching you, I suppose I can understand some of the appeal of a gun.”

“Good,” Ryan said, walking over to shake the Ruger free from Emma’s limp finger. “We’re taking as many of these with us as we can.” He extended the pistol butt-first toward Joe.

Joe frowned but took the gun. “You didn’t tip off any of your FBI friends for old time’s sake?”

Ryan gave him a disapproving look. “They’re just a precaution.”

A gunshot sounded from outside the house, making even Ryan jump. 

Joe raised an eyebrow.

“They took away my phone, Ryan,” Claire said. “Just like you asked. But not until I took the tracking device out of it.” Through her tears she was smiling—a cold, vindictive slice of teeth. “You want to be with each other? Good. You can die together. Right here.”

Joe clenched his teeth.

“That wasn’t a good move, Claire,” said Ryan. “I really didn’t want to have to kill you.”

“You won’t have to,” Joe said, walking over to the radiator and taking a fistful of Claire’s hair. “Because I’m going to do it.”

The front door swung open, its forged iron knob cracking against wood. 

“Put your hands up,” Mike said, stepping out of the blistering daylight, his long shadow on the floor almost reaching Ryan’s feet. “All of you.”

“You fucking idiot,” Ryan said, raising his hands.

“Ah, look, Ryan,” Joe said. “It’s your lovelorn little whore. Mr. Weston, you look—what is it they say?—’rode hard and put up wet.’”

“Drop the gun, Joe,” Mike said.

In the second that his gaze flickered over to Joe and Claire, Ryan pulled one of the pistols from his waistband and aimed it at Mike, who swung around but didn’t fire.

“I know you won’t kill me, Ryan.” 

“You obviously won’t kill me either,” Ryan said. “So where does that leave us?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Joe said, yanking Claire toward him by the hair and pressing the Ruger hard against her temple. “You try to shoot either of us and she dies.”

Mike let his aim waver. 

“Shoot Ryan!" Claire called. "I'm fine." 

Joe gave her a sound shake that made her cry out in pain. “If you think we’ve got a room full of people who won’t kill one another, my dear, you’re sorely mistaken.”

Another gunshot sounded from outside. It seemed to renew Mike’s resolve.

Both Ryan and Joe looked toward the door.

“Drop the gun, Mr. Weston,” Joe said. “Or she dies. Now.”

“He’s serious,” Ryan said.

Mike shot a look over his shoulder through the door, then lowered the gun to the ground.

“Mike, no!” said Claire.

“Kick it over here,” Ryan told Mike.

He obeyed.

As Ryan bent down to pick up the gun, Mike rushed him and knocked him off his feet. The pistol Ryan had been holding spun across the floor and came to rest next to Emma’s body.

Mike was on top of Ryan before he could get his breath back. Ryan hoped that Joe wouldn’t try to take Mike out while they were so close. He wasn’t the world’s best shot.

Mike punched Ryan on the jaw, hard. “How does it feel, huh?” he asked. “You like that?”

Across the room, Joe laughed. “Oh, Ryan. You’ve taught him well.”

“Now’s not the time, J—” Ryan’s words were cut off by a mouthful of Mike’s knuckles.

Through his punch-drunk haze, Ryan still managed enough force to slam the heel of his hand into Mike’s chest. Mike swayed backward and Ryan scrambled out from underneath him.

Mike went for the gun by his feet but Ryan kicked him underneath the chin and sent him sprawling.

“Hands up, both of you.”

“And you must be Max,” Joe said.

“Put the gun down,” Max said. She swung her aim in Ryan’s direction when he moved to pick up the gun. “Ryan, don’t,” she said. “Please.”

He backed away.

“Put the gun down, Joe,” said Max.

“I don’t think so,” said Joe.

“You won’t kill me,” Claire told him.

“And she won’t kill Ryan, you idiot woman,” Joe said.

“Claire’s right,” Mike said to Max. “They’re working together.”

“Why?” Max asked Ryan. “Why did you shoot the cops? They would have gone easy on you. Strauss was a serial killer.”

“He’s a serial killer, too,” Mike said. “Max, you have to shoot him.”

Max swung the gun around and trained it, though unsteadily, on Ryan. “Mike said—” she started. “Are you really in love with Joe Carroll?”

Ryan said nothing.

“Shoot him, Max!” Mike yelled.

“Wait,” said Joe. He took the gun away from Claire’s temple. She sagged when he let go of her hair. 

“Joe, no!” Ryan said, the words feeling strange in his swelling mouth. “She’s our leverage.”

“Good,” Max said, her weapon still aimed at Ryan, “now put the gun down.”

Joe smiled and placed the pistol on the floor. “Not our only leverage.” He pulled a knife from his back pocket and rushed over to grab Ryan, holding the knife to his jaw as he curled his fingers around his throat. “It seems Emma was right, Ryan. I’m only looking out for number one.”

Ryan went rigid, the point of the blade digging into the skin underneath his ear. Joe drew him backward against his body and Ryan could feel an erection pressing against him. He let his eyes slip closed, breathing in all the familiar scents rising from Joe: sweat, adrenalin, blood, sex. The pain in his jaw began to ebb as Joe’s fingers traced tiny circles on his skin.

In the brief silence, punctuated only by breath, the faint drone of a distant helicopter could be heard.

“Do you trust me, my love?” Joe murmured against his hair.

Ryan gave a nearly imperceptible nod.

“You’d best put the gun down, little girl,” Joe told Max.

“Do it, Joe,” Ryan said. “Kill me. Just let them go.”

“He’s bluffing,” Mike said, going for his gun. “They both are.”

Joe drew the knife away from Ryan’s throat and instead sunk it into his side with one quick, snake-like blow, making Ryan cry out and wilt in Joe’s embrace. 

“Am I bluffing, Mike?,” Joe asked. “Truly?” He brought the knife back up to Ryan’s throat. Bright drops of blood slid off its blade and fell onto Ryan’s heaving chest. A bloom of red began to color his shirt.

“Don’t!” Max called. “Don’t hurt him.”

“Then put the gun down and slide it over here,” Joe said.

“Don’t do it, Max,” said Mike.

But Max crouched down, putting the gun on the floor and brushing it toward Joe and Ryan. Joe stopped its trajectory with the toe of his boot. 

“Joe, please,” Ryan said. 

“Please what, Ryan?”

“Not her,” he said.

Joe let go of the knife and of Ryan, who slumped to the floor clutching his side. At the same time, Joe picked up the gun, leveled it at Mike, and shot him in the gut.

“Mike!” Max yelled. She moved toward Mike but Joe sent a bullet into the floor between them, kicking up splinters.

“Max, go!” Ryan shouted. He tossed the bloody knife at her. “Take Claire and go.”

“Mike,” she said again, tears welling in her eyes.

Clutching his stomach, Mike tried to speak. At first it was only a wet cough, spraying red droplets that fountained briefly into the air then settled on his face. “Listen to him, Max,” he said, voice thick with pain and blood.

“I’m not leaving you,” Max said, but at the same time she picked up the knife and went to cut Claire free.

Joe aimed the gun at Claire when Max had sawed through her bonds. “Leave the knife,” he said. “Try to pick up any other weapon and I’ll shoot the both of you.”

“Ryan,” Max said, “ _Please_. Please don’t do this.”

“Go!” Joe shouted. Claire took hold of Max’s sleeve and pulled her toward the door.

The wail of sirens could be heard as they fled.

Joe smiled, and pulled a folding utility knife from his pocket.

“We don’t have much time,” Ryan said.

Joe turned, his expression still amused. “Pleading for his life at the eleventh hour, are we?”

“No,” Ryan said. He looked over at Mike. “I’m sorry, kid. You shouldn’t have come. I told you I’d always choose Joe. But you didn’t listen.”

“Go to hell, Ryan.” Mike coughed again, sending an expressionistic spatter of blood across the planks. “Hurry up and do it,” he said to Joe. “I’d rather die than live in a fucking horror show run by the two of you.”

Ryan could hear the rumble of engines. “Joe,” he said.

“Your wish is my command,” Joe said, unfolding the blade and drawing it across Mike’s throat. The arc of arterial spray was weak as Mike had already lost a good deal of blood. Joe gave a disappointed sigh. 

With one more gurgling half-breath, Mike closed his eyes and lay still.

“We need to go,” said Ryan.

Joe stood up, wiping the knife on his trousers. “You know,” he said. “I’ve half a mind to leave you here.”

“What?”

“You could have at least answered Max’s question,” Joe said.

“Jesus Christ,” said Ryan, wincing and trying to stand, “you really do have the worst timing.”

“It’s a matter of pride,” said Joe, pocketing the knife and stooping to help Ryan to his feet. 

“You want me to say it?” Ryan asked, slinging his arm over Joe’s shoulder but trying to avoid the wounded portion. “Fine. I love you. I love you, Joe. Now get me the fuck out of here.”

“Ever the romantic,” Joe said, kissing Ryan’s cheek and helping him walk out the back door to the periphery fence.

A little beyond the compound’s rear gate was a small shed. The building itself was ramshackle, but inside it smelled of gasoline and there was a fresh canvas tarp slung over something large in the middle of the dirt floor.

Leaving Ryan propped by one of the walls, Joe pulled the tarp off a four-wheeled ATV, painted in green and grey.

“It’s not a white horse,” he said, “but it’ll have to do.”

Limping over, Ryan shook his head. “I hate you.”

“There’s a thin line, as they say.”

***

Ryan was expecting another vehicle, but Joe drove them to a spot in the middle of the woods and stopped next to a rocky overhang.

“Stay here,” he told Ryan.

“I hope your plan extends to something beyond that,” Ryan said.

Joe only smiled and hopped off the ATV. He disappeared for a moment behind the rock face, then the leaves on the ground next to the vehicle’s wheels began to shudder. A slice of blackness opened up in the earth, but it was only dark for a moment. Before long, as leaves began to slide into the maw, Ryan could see the faint blue flicker of fluorescent light.

When fully cranked down, the gate opened just enough room for the ATV to slip into the bunker below. Joe came out from behind the rock face, mopping sweat from his forehead. “I oiled that bloody thing nearly every day and still it gives me trouble.”

Ryan laughed, then grimaced at the stab of pain. “I’m impressed.” Ryan slid out of the seat and let Joe kick the ATV into neutral and ease it down the ramp. 

“This place was quiet the find,” Joe said. “Let me show you the entrance. I’ll need to cover this up again, then I’ll join you.”

At the door behind the overhang, Ryan gripped his bloody side with one hand and Joe’s arm with the other. “Don’t be too long,” he said.

“Never,” said Joe.

Down the narrow set of stairs was an apocalypse-survivalist’s wet dream. Metal shelves crammed with canned goods and jugs of water lined a narrow hallway. There was a covered plastic barrel with a tube leading through the ceiling, which Ryan assumed was meant to collect rainwater as well. Beyond the hall was a small main room. There was a chemical toilet, two narrow but sturdy cots and, on the far wall, an armory that would make the National Guard jealous.

Ryan had to smile. 

He limped over to one of the cots and lay down. The blood from the wound had slowed but it would still stain the crisp, scratchy sheets. He closed his eyes and took a few breaths.

Joe’s footsteps rang on the stairs, followed by the heavy thump of the metal door. 

“Now, then,” Joe said. “What do you think?”

Ryan opened his eyes. “Say something about a palace and I’ll punch you.”

Joe laughed. “Though I doubt you’ve the strength to punch anything, I’ll spare you.” He pulled a plastic first aid kit from one of the shelves, and an unopened bottle of Stolichnaya from another. He raised the bottle in Ryan’s direction. “Care for some?”

“No, actually,” Ryan said. “I have my drug.”

Joe favored him with a tender smile, which he returned. “It’ll hurt more,” he said.

“It’s worth it.”

Joe dragged the opposite cot over and sat down. He leaned over to kiss Ryan’s forehead, then opened the plastic box. He cut away Ryan’s shirt with a small pair of scissors, peeling away as gently as he could the edges of the fabric where they had begun to cling to the wound.

At the crack of the bottle’s seal, Ryan shut his eyes.

“Brace yourself, my darling,” Joe said.

Fire erupted in Ryan’s side. He shouted behind his teeth. 

“That’s the worst of it,” Joe said. He dabbed at the wound with gauze, then unwrapped a fresh pad and taped it to Ryan’s skin.

“Was this really _necessary_?” Ryan asked. “You could have hit a lung.”

“I didn’t. It’s quite superficial,” Joe said, picking at the knotted sweatshirt sleeves underneath his arm. 

“Hardly,” Ryan said. “I might need stitches.”

“We’ll see. Now stop your whining and help me. You’re not the only one injured here.”

Not without difficulty, Ryan sat up and helped Joe as much as he could. His hands were swollen nearly to the point that he couldn’t touch his forefinger to his thumb. He certainly couldn’t fit his fingers through the tiny loops of the scissors, so Joe was obliged to cut his own shirt off and shrug it away, wincing as the dried blood peeled away.

Ryan swung his legs over the side of the cot, leaning in to get a better look at the wound. “It’s not very deep,” he said. “The poker was pretty blunt. But it’s full of ash.”

Joe handed him the vodka. “Just get it over with.”

Ryan upended the bottle over Joe’s shoulder, letting the stream course through the shallow bowl of the wound until there was only a finger or two left. Joe shouted and swore but he sat through it.

“Gah,” Joe said, panting. “You’re a fucking sadist.”

“You like it,” Ryan said.

Joe shot him a sour look, but he didn’t protest.

Ryan patted the wound dry and taped a square of gauze over it. 

“I’ve got some serious regrets at the moment about letting Claire live,” Joe said. 

“Don’t be a baby,” Ryan told him. He ran a finger along Joe’s cheek, just underneath the long slash mark. “Now for this.” Ryan poured some of the alcohol onto a fresh gauze pad and dabbed at Joe’s face.

He hissed. 

“You know,” Ryan said, “I think I’ve changed my mind about that drink.” With as gentle a touch as he could manage, he wiped at the dried blood, then kissed along the line of the cut, the vodka burning his lips and mingling with Joe’s taste. “That’s better,” he said.

Ryan fished out a package of butterfly bandages and applied them in a neat line across Joe’s face.

“Will it be bad, do you think?” Joe asked.

“Even if it is,” Ryan said, “It’ll be perfectly you.”

Joe did not look appeased.

Ryan reached over and stroked Joe’s cock through his pants. “Being there, making a stand,” Ryan said, “it turned you on.”

“It did,” said Joe. “I want to kill by your side. I want to kill with you.”

“You will. We have all the time in the world,” Ryan said. “Take these off.”

Joe was almost completely hard by the time he eased his pants and briefs down his thighs. 

Ryan wrapped his hand as far as he could around Joe’s cock, but couldn’t muster much of a grip. “This damn thing is close to useless,” he said, shaking his hand. “Here, push the beds together.”

Luckily, the cots were light. Joe collapsed backward, one hand around his erection. 

“Let me,” Ryan said, and propped himself on Joe’s belly, guiding his cock into his mouth.

“Oh, Ryan.”

It was a halfhearted blow job by any standards, distracted as Ryan was by pain and fatigue, but Joe was already close to the edge. Ryan swallowed without complaint, then rolled back on his cot, breathing hard. 

Joe reached over to slide his palm along the length of Ryan’s hardness. “Let me help you get these off,” he said.

Ryan lifted his hips, using the anticipation of pleasure to fight against the pain of the wound.

“I’m afraid my mouth isn’t much use at the moment,” Joe said. “But I can still manage with this.” He spat into his palm once and curled wet fingers around Ryan’s cock, stroking slowly. 

“Yeah,” Ryan said, “just like that.” He expected the exhaustion to make it difficult, but being here with Joe—safe, alive, together—drove his need. After only a minute or two he was coming hot on his stomach. 

Joe worked him through his orgasm, then bent his head and licked Ryan clean as Ryan stroked his hair.

Utterly spent, they lay back, fingers intertwined across the sliver of space between the cots.

“I need to thank you,” Joe said. “For the gift.”

“What gift?”

“Mike Weston’s life,” Joe said. “I know that was very…personal.”

“Emma was personal, too, Joe. I guess I should thank you for that.”

“I told you long ago I’d give her to you,” Joe said. He turned his head to look at Ryan, who was already looking over at him, his sliced cheek, red lips, tired eyes. “All my kills, Ryan. All of them. Each was a love letter. All of those letters together were a book. I didn’t realize it for a very long time. It was the masterpiece I intended to write. All for you. Only for you.”

Ryan smiled. “I know, Joe,” he said. “I read every single word.”

Neither of them spoke for a long time after that. The silence wasn’t empty but comfortable, and charged with potential.


End file.
